My Clocking In System

Chapter 22: The Blue Door

The engine thrummed up through both of them. He felt her settle in. Deliberate. Her chin was hooked over his shoulder. Her breath on his neck.

"This okay?" she said, low, against his skin.

It was not a question about the seating.

He could hear the smile in it. She knew what she was doing. She’d known since the café.

He could not answer. His mouth wasn’t working. She let him not answer for a second. Then she shifted her hand a half-inch lower on his stomach, just to make her point.

"Danny."

"Yeah," he managed. His voice was not the one he’d brought into the café. "Yeah. It’s fine."

"Fine."

"Fine."

"All right then." Her arms tightened. She drew herself flush against him, her body warm and close, her mouth near his ear. "Go on then, Danny Flynn. Show me what the great mystery rides."

He pulled out into the evening.

Half-hard already and trying not to think about it.

It was the best of everything that had happened to him in three mad days. Just this. The cold air. The lit streets. A chicken shop on Rye Lane with the queue still going at six.

The bridge over the railway. The city going past in particular things now, not a blur, because she was on the back of his scooter and he was paying attention to everything.

Jodie Carter pressed against his back like she’d decided not to let go. Her laugh in his ear every time he took a corner. Her thighs squeezed his when he leaned. Every time she squeezed, his cock got harder against the inside of his jeans.

Eleven years and somehow it had all led here.

I want to pull over. I want to turn around and put her on this seat facing me and find out what sound she makes when I push inside her.

He took the long way.

Of course, he took the long way.

Her building was a low-rise off the park. Nothing like his. Ordinary. Real. Lit windows and a takeaway on the corner and someone’s music through a wall.

Danny pulled up outside and cut the engine and the sudden quiet rang.

Neither of them moved.

Her arms were still around him. Her breath against the back of his neck. Slow and not steady. Her fingers had slipped lower while they’d been riding. Thumbs tracing circles on his stomach through his jumper.

His cock was aching.

He didn’t move because if he moved, he was going to turn around and kiss her on this scooter, and that wasn’t how this was going to go.

Then she climbed off.

Unhurried.

Her hand was trailing across his shoulders as she came round the side. She pulled the helmet free and shook her hair out and stood on the pavement looking at him in the streetlight.

Flushed. Lips parted. Eyes dark. A piece of hair stuck to her cheek.

The air between them had gone thick.

Neither of them said anything because there was nothing left to say that the whole afternoon hadn’t already said.

"So," Jodie said.

"So."

"This is me."

She nodded at the door, but didn’t move toward it. The half-smile was gone.

"Danny. I’m going to say a thing, and you’re going to let me say all of it before you do anything clever."

He waited.

"You disappeared on me once. And I was angry about it for about five years and then I just wasn’t. I just thought, that’s a shame, that was a good one, gone." She took a breath.

"And then you walk into my shop in a binbag and a week later you’re this. And I don’t understand the half of it and I don’t think you’re telling me everything and I’ve decided I don’t care, for now, because I watched you across that table for three hours today and you’re still him. Under all this."

A small wave at the coat. "You’re still the boy who did the pen thing at the back of maths and never said a word to me. And I spent a long time wishing he had."

Danny’s chest had gone tight.

"Jodie..."

"I’m not finished."

Her voice had dropped. She closed the small gap between them, stepping into the space between the scooter and the streetlight. Her eyes went to his mouth.

"Eleven years ago, you were too much of a coward to do this. So I’m going to assume you still are, and do it myself."

She took the front of his coat in both fists.

She pulled him down.

She kissed him.

Soft at first. Certain.

It stopped the world. Her mouth warm against the cold evening, and Danny stood there one frozen heartbeat too stunned to move, because it had been years since anyone had touched him like he was something other than a man holding a parcel.

Then he kissed her back, and it stopped being soft.

Her lips parted and a sound came out of her. Low and real.

Mmh.

His hand found the small of her back and pulled her in. The other slid into her hair. She rose onto her toes, her fists opening against his chest, sliding up around his neck.

The cold and the street and the eleven years fell away.

Just Jodie kissing him like she’d been saving it for a decade. Deep and hungry. The heat of it went through him.

I want to be inside her. I want to feel her come around my cock.

He backed her the three steps to the recessed brick beside her door without thinking about it, the entry set just inside the line of the building, dim out of the streetlight. Her shoulder blades found the wall. Her body the whole length of his.

She felt him hard against her stomach and didn’t pull back.

She pressed into it. Her hips tilted forward. A sound in her throat.

Ah.

His hand slid down from the small of her back to her hip. Then lower.

He grabbed her ass. Fingers digging in through the denim. Pulling her against him.

She moaned into his mouth. Louder this time.

Mmh.

Her hands tightened in his hair.

"Yes," she breathed. Barely a word. Just air against his lips.

He wanted more.

He shifted his hand. Slid it round to the front. Under the waistband of her jeans.

She gasped against his lips. Her knee buckled. Her hand came down from his neck and grabbed his wrist. Not stopping him. Holding him there. Her head dropped to his shoulder.

His fingers found her pussy.

Wet. Slick.

The feel of her went through him like electricity. He slipped a finger inside her and she was soaking, clenching around him instantly.

His cock ached against the denim of his own jeans, thick and heavy.

"Don’t stop," she whispered. "Ah. Danny."

I’m going to taste her. I’m going to feel her pussy clench around my cock.

"Danny," she breathed against his neck. A plea, not a question.

Jodie broke it. Barely. Her forehead against his. Both of them were breathing like they’d run.

"Okay," she said, unsteady, against his mouth. "Okay. We need to, "

"Yeah," he said, his voice wrecked, his fingers still wet from her. "Yeah."

She pulled back enough to look at him.

The half-smile was gone. Her pupils were blown wide. Her chest rising and falling against his. She looked at his mouth. She looked up at the lit window of her flat above them.

She pulled in a breath like she was going to say something. Maybe we should slow down. We’ve got time.

The eleven years, the watch, the unexplained money. He saw them all flicker across her face. He watched her weigh them against the hand in her jeans.

She let out the breath.

"You should come up," she said. Quiet. Choosing it against her own better judgment. "Park that ridiculous scooter somewhere it won’t get nicked, Danny Flynn, and come up."

She leaned in. Her mouth at his ear. Her free hand slid down his chest, his stomach, and pressed flat against the front of his jeans, wrapping over the bulge of his cock.

He was rock hard against her palm and she felt all of it.

She paused there. He could feel her thinking.

Then she said it, low, deliberate, the kind of voice she had not used in the café once, the voice she had chosen to give him just now because she wanted to be sure he understood what was happening.

That isn’t her café voice. She’s making sure I hear it.

"My pussy is so wet for you." She said it slowly. "Don’t make me wait."

Then she stepped back. Turned. Walked toward the door without looking back.

His heart stopped and started again at a sprint.

The girl from the back of maths. Eleven years and a whole ruined life and a magic phone. All of it leading here. Her walking away from him toward a lit door, knowing he’d follow.

He followed.

He didn’t waste time getting the Vespa onto its stand.

Jodie took his hand and pulled him through the blue-lit door of her building and up the stairs. The door clicked shut behind them on the cold and the city and the rest of the world.